Star Trek a Christmas trifle (part one)
by Ellison Spinrad
Summary: CAPTAIN JIM KIRK and his advanced weapons-sciences officer, LIEUTENANT CAROL MARCUS have fallen into something deeper and more passionate than their ongoing casual relationship. She's excited when he books them a private cabin on icy Nefud over their short holiday leave together and things go wonderfully... until they exchange the unusual gifts they've brought one another...
1. Chapter 1

**' E**

 _ **I'm not only a life-long STAR TREK fan but also a professional filmmaker**. Over the past two years, since the release of "Star Trek Into Darkness," which has become a favorite film of mine and baffling me with its divisive effects on fans, I wrote a screenplay for spare time fun; it was my Abrams-verse STAR TREK Part 3: "Tomorrow Never Knows." (much of which I've posted on Tumblr)**_

 _ **In writing it, the characters of Chris Pine's Kirk and Alice Eve's Carol Marcus really came alive as I'd felt a strong chemistry between them already on-screen and thought their relationship should be part of what drives the future stories forward, possibly even, after struggle, conflict, action and drama (and sex), providing them the happiness denied them in the Prime Universe. I began using some elements of my half-finished screenplay to do something seriously I hadn't done in some time: writing prose fiction (screenplays truly are a different form of writing). As I began work on what is turning into the novel length STAR TREK BEYOND FOREVER (being posted serialized on this site), I was inspired to write a short story that I posted to Tumblr in 4 parts over the Christmas season in 2013-14.**_

 _ **That story, "A Christmas Trifle," is being presented here, polished and divided into simply 2 halves. It was not and still isn't, really, intended as a prequel to the novel as I was using it to find my way a bit around the characters and relationships. So, there may seem to a few instances of discontinuity between the short and the novel, but it largely does work in this regard and if, as I hope to do, write a follow-up full length novel taking place after BEYOND FOREVER, I may rewrite small pieces of this short and include it as a prelude to my Jim and Carol story (with at least 2 other short stories in the works that would fit in down the way).**_

 _ **If you are enjoying BEYOND FOREVER, I hope (and believe) you'll enjoy this. And as always, I'm very open to both public reviews/discussions and private messaging with questions, ideas, etc.; please also recommend it to friends and other readers for as a filmmaker, I know it's word of mouth that sells best. If you've just stumbled across this short and enjoy it, please jump into and join the ride, BEYOND FOREVER...**_

 _ **** to watch my award winning and crowd pleasing, at festivals and on movie channels, debut feature film as writer-director-exec. producer, "It All Happens Incredibly Fast", search for it by title on Youtube where it is available for a time in full for free; if you like it, leave a note and tell your friends to take a look (it's a good one!)**_

 _ **A Christmas Trifle**_

 **e**

She enjoyed that he appreciated at least a few traditions beyond the nautical - - and the astro, sea and space, and fast vintage cars, but for the life of her Carol Marcus had no idea what old, melancholy jazz piano had to do with the season. And she wasn't about to ask who the hell Charlie Brown was but he'd insisted that she'd love it and so she'd dug it out deep from the cabin's computer. She flicked a look up at him, an inquisitive glance, as she stretched out on the old overstuffed sofa, relieved he didn't catch her as he usually did, and watched him at diligent work. Here was a young man, too young in some respects she sometimes thought, to do what was expected of him and that he demanded of himself, who had just days ago lead them through a swirling nebula with three Klingon warships on the prowl around them and who had eluded the enemy without firing a shot, an intense grin lighting his handsome features as they shot away from the swirl, homeward. And, dammit, he wore that same look now doing something as simple as stroking her bare feet.

She'd gone for a long cross country ski to work up an appetite for the dinner the Chalet staff would be be delivering and had expected him to remark that there were better ways to get hungry but when he'd just said, distractedly, "stay warm." little jingling alarm bells went off in her head. He was always tricks and plans and gambles.

She'd plowed hard across the densely packed icy snow of McMurdo, Starfleet cartographers' nickname for a vast open stretch across the equatorial plain of the frozen world Nefud. Carol felt her heart pound and a growing ache in her long legs and marbled arms and realized that she'd forgotten how cold McMurdo could get, the wind cutting in gusts through her despite her thermals and heated form fitting body suit and furry, old Russian soldier's cap. The last sliver of Nefud's orange sun disappeared over the horizon and the land had turned blue by the time she arrived back at the cabin, removed the skis and jogged and stretched. She was glad she'd gotten the work out and that she had gotten away from him for a while at least to clear her head. This was only the second time they'd been away together since their relationship had become public knowledge and that first time had proven a tumult; he'd put the same kind of energy and drive into a late night session of Scrabble as an afternoon of one-on-one beach volleyball. But there was no one Carol Marcus wanted to spend this Christmas with, and maybe more, than Jim Kirk.  
Jim had met her at the door asking, "So how was it?", already helping her pull off her tight thermal jacket and untying the soft scarf from her long throat.

"Good," she'd answered. "Got the blood circulating." He ran a palm over her cheek—

"My god! You're freezing!"

"Yes, yes, I am," she'd laughed as he angled her to one of the heavy wooden chairs in the cabin's vestibule, sitting her down and together, with Jim down on one knee, they'd pulled off her boots. Carol stood and he'd watched as she'd stripped away a heavy black and red cable knit and the gray sweatshirt that once was his that she'd cut sleeveless for scrimmage football.

"Is there any there there?" he'd asked at the growing pile of her clothing and she'd pointed at him knowingly.

"Paraphrasing Gertrude Stein, eh? Well—" She was down to the black rubber formfitting one piece. "As for me, I'm all woman," Carol said, all silly-sexy.

"Yes, you most assuredly are," Jim had answered and was dead serious. He'd pulled her close and hoisted her up in his arms and twirled her around.

"Jim!", she'd exclaimed brightly, loving the sound of saying his name freely and lightly without Enterprise klaxons driving her cry or in the suddenly absurd context of arguing about torpedo dispersal patterns. As he'd carried her into the main low ceilinged chamber of the wooden cabin, she added with mock diffidence, "My dear man, you're much too good to me."

"You ain't seen nothing yet."

The water in the deep porcelain tub was on the hot side of warm but still a comfort. Carol could appreciate the heat spreading through her legs and her shoulders and the bubbles and lightly scented bath oils were heavy around her body like a liquid comforter. Jim had, after peeling her inch by inch from the athletic body suit, smiling, both of them, at every inch of exposed skin, slowly lowered her in. He'd gently poured a jug of steaming water over her, plastering her bobbed blonde curl then had wiped her hair with care from her wide eyes and back from her forehead. She felt it damp and drying against her strong shoulders. Taking a long, slow pull of the vodka martini with the delicate lemon twist he'd had waiting for her, feeling the cold frost of the icy glass against her fingertips and the strange chilled heat of the alcohol in her chest, Carol realized she'd barely thought of the Enterprise and her mates there since landing at the Chalet. And with reason. Jim Kirk rarely took advantage of "the privileges of command" and when he did he was generous about including his friends but his thoughts, since the moment the ship had leaped to warp and into its five year future over a year ago, were always with the crew and whereas some starship commanders may only acknowledge the season with a small tree on the rec deck and a turkey dinner in the mess, Jim knew how to appreciate family. And for a man with such a fouled up childhood, Carol thought, that spoke strongly and accurately of his character. He'd had Spock alter rotations from three shifts to four, and with skeleton crews drawn by lots, and had Uhura, who needed no encouragement, arrange shipwide parties and gift-giving amongst stations and sections. He'd likely had asked Nyota to pipe that sad jazz piano over the ship's comm…

The music was still playing when Jim had returned to towel her off but she'd sent him away playfully the moment his broad hands moved across her hard stomach and his full lips pressed down on her bare shoulders. She'd told him she'd wanted first to make herself presentable — "presentable," like she was about to teach a seminar or accept an award. He loved how "proper" she could sound and she'd tried to teach him what-for by talkin' dirty once but that amused them both more than it titillated and she knew she was as stuck with as equal and opposite a dysfunctional upbringing as he was, hard-working privilege to his sometimes self-imposed hardscrabble. Carol brushed back and scented her hair, touched perfume here and there and chose a pair of comfortable vintage black Capris and pulled on matching Japanese slippers and Jim's short silky robe of deep Royal blue with Klingon glyphs painted across the mid-riff sash she pulled tight.

Then, with a final look in the mirror of the bedroom's closet door, she tousled her hair with a quick hand and couldn't help but smile at herself. The Christmas vacation, as short as it had to be — three days and two nights — had come as his wonderful surprise for her. What she had as a surprise for him, her gift to the bravest man she'd ever known and an ace at, maybe, the toughest job in the galaxy would knock Jim Kirk into orbit.

Carol swayed into the cabin's main chamber where Jim had stoked a crackling, lightly smokey fireplace. There was a pleasant mischievousness to her usual casual confidence and she stirred to the realization that his martinis were like the man himself — so easy to enjoy and, boy-oh, did they pack a wallop. She kicked herself a little at her tinge of disappointment that he hadn't made a fuss over her entrance or particularly even noticed her; he'd played — if indeed he was "playing" … sometimes this romance drove her batty with second questions and self-recriminations — such the attentive boyfriend since arriving, something they'd agreed to avoid on board the ship and particularly when at station… only in the intimacy of one anothers' quarters… "Boyfriend"… Jesus, here's a man who had the power to turn half a planet to a puddle of molten lead— and "girlfriend"? Her? Doctor Carol Marcus, recently on the short list for a Zee-Magnees prize nomination and who was privately certain that her restricted research which even Jim barely knew anything about was a stone's throw — admittedly, a long stone's throw — from her opening up the powers of creation. But then he was also the "guy" who loved those hot cars and atmosphere-jets and fast, intense angling on alien seas, going after the big one that got away from more experienced hands. And she was the "girl" who loved, now, watching the old movies from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries denied her in that privileged childhood as "coarse" and who still loved riding the horse that had won her Olympic Silver at sixteen through the English old country.

But Jim had noticed her, she saw, despite his posture and put-on attitude of lazy masculinity — feet up on the coffee table carved from a single slab of local Warm Stone, a double scotch on the rocks in hand, head back against the couch as he listened to the game. He was watching her through half-closed eyes and smiled broadly when it was she who caught him this time.

"So, who's winning?," she asked, putting her book down on the table, and a small box wrapped in old fashioned snow-and-sleds soft paper.

"Patriots," he answered, with dull familiarity. "How does one team win this thing for forty-seven seasons in a row and people still make a party out of it?"

"Rah-Rah-Rah. Maybe you'll give cricket a try after all."

"I can make more sense out of the Andorian biathalon, figure skating with switchblades."

Jim was listening to, and watching what wavered through the holo-vision, the Superbowl which actually wouldn't be played on Earth — in Accra, Ghana — for another three months. Through some bizarre spasm in space-time, an event that hadn't actually occurred bounced around inside a quasar, ULAS Eight-Oh-Five-Five, the reliable "Double Nickel," in a galaxy that didn't even have a name for the books yet, bounced back at, literally, incalculable speed off of listening post Epsilon Six, routinely shorting the station out, and into the heart of the Federation. Sitar of Vulcan was still having nightmares over what he claimed was a simple explanation that even he couldn't wrap his logic around. In the short term, this mind-bending of reality had simply annoyed Jim Kirk. "What good's football for if you can't bet on it?"

He pulled his legs from the table and sitting up, took the wrapped gift she'd laid down in hand — gently. "For me?"

"Unless you've invited the other Captains of the Fighting First for a round and a sing-a-long by the Chalet bar piano and haven't told me." She smiled at him sweetly, forcing pretend-contriteness from him for his compulsive surprises aimed equally at annoying her for fun and pleasing her for something more.

"It's just you and me." He handed her back the present and she went and slipped it under what their hosts had provided as a "tree" — a kind of gnarled bough with luminescent gold needles found in the garden spots of the Nefud tundra. There was only one other lonely present beneath the bough — Jim's gift to her in a papered box about two feet square that left her perplexed — though they had exchanged starters shortly after arriving at the cabin over local spiced root tea with its ever so ethereal narcotic zing. Jim was wearing his gift now; a sleek, loose sleeved, Vee-necked longshirt, silver-spun by rare crow-sized bee moths from the spires of Antilles Paramus over his old farmboy denims. She'd be wearing hers from him later that night — though she'd helped him select the clingy, sheer and short black cotton Argelean slip.

Jim hoisted himself off the couch to the wet bar and mixed Carol another martini — again taking care with the lemon twist, shaving it close — as she joined him, leaning back on her elbows against the counter.

"Do you think Mister Spock celebrated Christmas? As a child, I mean."

"I don't think there was a baby Jesus on Vulcan. Wise Men, maybe."

"I'm not suggesting some old-time religion, only that his mother was human," Carol replied. "I just wonder, maybe, well, she must have made him at least aware of the traditions of the season. On Earth."

"You mean, did he stroke fingers under the mistletoe with pretty little pointy eared girls or leave out a fresh garden salad for friendly ole Saint Surak? His father doesn't strike me as an Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy kind of guy. You've never met that brand of austerity."

"Ambassador Sarek? You know, I think I did meet him once. At one of my mother's high society dos."

"Really? When was this?"

"Long time ago. More than twenty years, I imagine, a UFP Council charity thing in New York," she said, laughing a little at the small memory. "I couldn't have been more than, I don't know, seven or eight but I do remember a very serious man with pointed ears who scared me a little. I'd been told not to shake his hand, just bow my head quickly. But the woman he was with, I think she took my hand in hers and she was soft-spoken and had a friendly smile. She had to be human."

"They didn't have a sullen twelve year old know it all with them? With a really ridiculous hair cut?"

She hid the smile as she shook her head. Pushed, she'd have to admit she was always genuinely amused by the honest, sometimes awfully sharp, sniping between the two men who were clearly such friends. "No, no, I don't think so." She gave him a nudge. "You can be so mean."

"You'll have to ask him what he remembers, if anything, about that when we get back. Catch him in the right frame of mind and he'll actually talk a bit about her — his mom. The, uh… fondness, I guess you'd call it, between them."

Carol lightly stroked her blue-painted nails down his bare forearm as he'd compulsively pushed up the sleeves of the new shirt.

"Well," she mused softly and, she knew as she'd said it, a little too earnestly, responding to him, "That would make one of you. Who knew he'd find it easier to talk about his family? Especially his mum."

Jim's features tensed, cocking his head a little to the right— like a poker "tell" whenever she pressed too hard and, in this instance, she'd barely pressed at all. It was getting worse, this, and it worried her; like the paradox of foreboding, of a reality that hadn't yet happened, wrapped around and pulsing from that distant quasar, the closer they became — closer than any of the very few lovers she'd had — the more personally walled off he became over certain privacies. And she understood that when it came to, say, Tarsus Four or even his lost wild years between Hawkeye College and the Academy, when he'd nearly burnt out before he'd even begun — he'd talk it all out in time, she was certain. But when it came to Winona Kirk…? Heavens knew, Carol had her own problems with a judgmental mother, especially when she'd sided with her dad after the divorce, and had been rebuilding that burnt bridge since the nightmare of Khan but Mrs. Kirk was the quiet legend in a family of heroes, the galaxy traversing xenobiologist with more first contacts on her resume since Jonathan Archer's mission and Clegg Forbes' days on the USS Horizon.

Then Jim looked back at her and his body relaxed with his typical practiced swagger. He moved her around, drawing her back toward him and slipped his fingers beneath the silky robe and she felt his thumbs press and dance against her still flaming-sore trapezoids. Goddammit. Then he was nuzzling the curve along her neck and shoulder — his warm breath… God… damn… him. And he kissed her cheek, whispering in her ear, his lips barely touching her skin… "Carol…"

"You're… impossible."

"Yeah… yeah. You're right. I am. Completely… impossible."

"Jim…?"

He answered her by running an open palm down her right arm and pushing his hand into hers. She wrapped her fingers around his, held them tight, and instinctively lead him back to the beckoning comfort of the couch by the fire. The crisp music from the autoplayer popped and cracked with the restored hiss of an old era recording, the piano jazz lolling as children sang with disaffected longing… _"Christmas time is here, happiness and cheer… Time for all what children call their favorite time of year…"_

By the time Jim had eased her feet from the Japanese slippers and she was watching him gently rubbing her soles, then applying lovely pressure to where he knew she needed it, June Marcus' calculated kindness and Winona Kirk's unease around her son were consumed by the cabin and the here and now and James Kirk — in the strange promise in that box she had wrapped and placed under the golden bough.

"Jim, I need you to open your Christmas present, my gift to you. It's really, I think, for both of us."

He almost chuckled — almost, but he stopped himself. "You don't know what it is you got me?"

"Actually, no. Not exactly," she answered, a light, giddy laugh in her smile. She was about to discover, maybe the most profound thing about herself, about her and Mister Kirk, and it could very well fall flat, a terrible, disheartening ridiculous let down. Or maybe not.

"Jim, I'm a woman of science— and faith, in that, to me, the secrets of the universe and our desire to understand them are… borne of mystery. My gift to you's a mystery box and I think — I hope — it's filled with secrets."

"Really…," he said quietly and that's all he said, staring at her with the fire bouncing off his ocean blue eyes and he smiled at her as if, she thought, he saw her. Really saw her.

"If I know you, Captain, my Captain, you're always ready to jump into the great unknown—"

Then there was ringing and clanging at the front door.

 _ **to be continued. . . .**_


	2. Star Trek a Christmas trifle part II

**Star Trek _"a Christmas trifle_ " - - part I I**

"Let me guess, golf clubs?"

Carol smiled a little tightly. Jim had seen and held the gift she'd placed under the bough the night before; they'd joked about it — and she'd gone so far as to portend, in all seriousness, that it held some hint of their future together and had wanted him to open it then. Jim knew this set of "golf clubs" shaped rather like a bottle of alien liquid-grain was no carefully sought high risk "mystery box" and the only pleasure she got from that was that he confirmed how deeply she understood her man; she knew damn well he wasn't going to say a word about it until or unless she clearly wanted him to.

"Ah, the good stuff. Glengarry. Genuine Canadian rye whiskey," Jim said, pretending to be impressed, tearing the wrap as he read the old-fashioned paper label. "From Aldebaran." Carol shook her head, feeling decidedly ridiculous. He noticed. But he kept things lively, adding, "I'm gonna have me a time keeping this away from a certain CMO and a notorious Scotsman."

"There's an easy though foolhardy solution to that, you know."

That made Jim laugh openly— finally, this cold morning. "I'd like to see that, "Iron Guts" Marcus. This sweet hooch from planet hell has got your number!" He grabbed her with rough house playfulness, pulling her back against his chest, down on the floor against the sofa. Carol's smile lost its tightness.

"Care to make that interesting, Kirk?," she replied with a rakish cocking of her head, looking back up at him, as Jim reached under the bough and drew forth the largeish, flatish wrapped box, handing over his gift to her.

"I just did."

The ringing she'd heard outside the night before had been expected — the Chalet's gourmet Christmas Eve dinner's arrival What hadn't been expected was pure Jim Kirk. He'd arranged for none other than the local Effete itself, the renowned Piscesian, Vaquqes, to prepare the meal. But despite the Master's artistry, the results horrified. Jim's turkey-fried Ithian zebra porterhouse was a button of fat, his "fresh, local" corn cob, a monstrous, twisted buttered ram's horn; Carol's spinach salad was three odd grape-engorged leaves and calling the sliced Klingon qu'aab crispy, a political kindness. Vacquqes was leading his staff away in less than twenty minutes, pausing at the door.

"Food? Enjoy?"

Jim barely found the words. "It's, uh…"

"Wonderful!"

Then the chef was gone.

"—terrible."

Carol fought the laugh… and failed. "I'm sorry, sweetie, but— it— really— is… awful!" She broke down, nearly choking and snorting on the laughter. And the Captain wore the face of such a wounded schoolboy.

"He came so highly recommended." Carol fought her swallow of wine.

She'd made it up to him with the trifle. Prepping it n the ship's galley using her grandmother's recipe, she'd sent Jim, raised on apple pie and store-got ice cream, into eye-rolling ecstasy at its blend of soft cake, fresh fruit, its, wealth of custard and whipped cream doused with touches of sherry and vodka. She grinned with glint-eyed pride.

"Can I bake or can't I?"

She picked their holiday movie, too, bemused by the ease with which he nearly always agreed to her everyday private choices. She chose some old, vintage black and white remastered tri-di Americana, a funny romance that made even Jim, with his taste for complicated modern spy thrillers, chuckle. He saw more than a little of Carol in the airy-bright daffy female star, an off-beat beauty with an unusual voice playing a Main Line Philly socialite who resented the perception of her as a stone cold Goddess. She saw in him both leads — the musically named dashing cad, C.K. Dexter Haven and the good-humored, vaguely cynical romantic everyman with the endearing semi-stutter.

They only made it about it half way through the picture.

Carol slowly slid a hand along the inside of Jim's thigh as his fingers got lost in her hair. Then their open mouths were pushing against each others' and soon she was barely wearing the slip they'd chosen her recently and she was lighting candles then almost ritually stripping Jim naked. Carol knelt over him and he rose to draw her close but with her fingers flat on his chest, she pushed him down, ran her hands up along his body and pinned and crossed his wrists over him. He went to speak. She pressed her fingers over his full lips. There would be time for words later….

The lambent light of Nefud's sister planet Aqubi seeped through the bedroom curtain, the ambient blue reflecting off the snow fields. Carol watched Jim deep in sleep, still lightly thoughtful despite his carnal exhaustion. She'd never had much trouble sleeping in part because of the regiments of starship schedules, in part because of her own mental discipline. She was also alive now, vital, with the nervy energized buzz of womanly erotic satisfaction; he'd had the rare ability from the start to touch her depths and they both thrilled when their ardor turned raw, even rough in a shifting play and exploration of power, and felt no regret. Post-coital, Jim's sleep had turned slumber — manly, heavy.

She absently stroked his thick hair, each stroke a reminder of the joy of the day, a special joy. There'd been his eager attentiveness made funny by his self-aware near-obeisance, matched by her usually unappreciated stone-faced absurd humor but whether it was the emotional walls he'd erect without warning or her uncharacteristic simpleness of purpose, the appeal of the "mystery box" was slowly turning on Carol. It might have been just misgivings; then again, maybe it was recognition of a deeply wrong choice.

She rolled close to him and lightly shook his bare, wide shoulder. "Jim…?" She rubbed him again, a little more firmly. "Jim?" He looked up at her, his thoughts fuzzing into shape, perhaps not with the alacrity to the call-whistle from the bridge but always alert to her slightest query and expression of thought.

"Huh? Wha'sit?"

"How often do you…" She chose her words even more carefully than usual. "Think about the future?"

"You and me Our future, y'mean?"

"Yes."

"Gotta get back to the ship… two days. Sorry…. love to stay long- - I got Green Sheets, year end…. Earth Mean. You gotta refit the, uh…" was all he could manage.

"I mean actually… touching, being there and experiencing it — knowing the future."

Kirk groaned and pushed himself up, his weight back on his elbows…..

"Carol, you're a scientist. You know it doesn't work that way. You can go back into the past and come back again—" He noticed the old clock on the wall. "Honey, it's nearly oh-four-hundred," he fumbled. "You want to talk about time travel?"

"I'm not talking about slingshots or Gateway. I mean, if you could somehow try changing the future - - if you had that chance…" she asked, "do you think it too dangerous?"

"You mean other than just living your life? We're always changing things, our decisions…. any other way, I don't think it's possible," he objected, a little annoyed. "Sweetie, switch it off and go to sleep." He rolled back away.

"Don't "sweetie" me- -," she caught herself, had almost sneered. "When I ask you something, no matter how mad it sounds—" her tone couldn't lose that haughty edge that sometimes excited him a little as much as it turned him, more generally, peevish or, worse - - Captain-ly. "I expect to be taken with appropriate respect."

"What? You want me, the skipper-hick, to tell you some everything but the kitchen sink bedtime story about the future?"

"No, I expect my so-called superior officer, the genius," she snapped. "The future — an unknowable with an answer— a— an answer open to the kind of man unafraid of things maybe made to be afraid of," she said.

"Oh, Jesus."

"When something's that unknown, it's a challenge. A very scary one."

He laid his head back with a big breath of a bitter laugh, an exhausted disbelief…

"I don't mean you're frightened. You're a fearless man, Jim. Not even afraid of a… of the mystery the future holds. Our future. But maybe you should be." she said.

"Good night, Carol." He turned away, closing his eyes, closing her out.

She turned to her side of the bed. "Good night."

She shifted around, her energy up. Her anger with him and with her own weaknesses - - "falling for this man? Her own ship's Captain?! You know better, you're not, were never, such a stupid child, knowing men like this your whole life and only just managing to tolerate their overblown" - - finally forcing herself up, she sat on the edge of the bed, more and more aware of the grumble of his soft snores. His steady sonorous groans finally, after a time, became mild irritation. Before that irritation could grow into some form of dislike, she pushed herself away and left the bed chamber.

Picking a bottle of Altair water from the freezer, Carol wandered the main room. She paused and was distracted by the colorful twinkling string of Tikki lights, the festive tundra bough, the two wrapped gifts — his for her, that odd, flat thing, and the damn mystery box she'd took such effort to secure for him, that she'd wanted to open between them earlier. She went and picked it up, held it, turned it over in her palm….. and walked to the room's big closet by the vestibule entry and hid it in a pocket in her antique great coat. She'd wake early and find something else for him to open after brunch. She knew he'd know she'd changed his gift but she also suspected he wouldn't ask her about it — not without reason.  
She slipped back into bed and he didn't stir at all.

The hard, cold surface whispered their footfalls against powder and dull ice; on Nefud, the snows didn't festively crunch. And even short hikes were difficult unless one was a hard time spelunker or enjoyed repelling sharp crags, something she knew he delighted in — thankfully not this morning. The air was fresh and the wind had died to merely bitter, though, and Carol was grateful for Uhura's last minute advice about throwing in a pair of old work boots. Her ski gear would have been uncomfortable for this travail; the boots she preferred, had brought for special ocasions, unwearable in this terrain. Despite her no-nonsense scientific thinking and her farther's quasi-military influence, she'd indulged since her late teens one unapproachable fetish courtesy of her mothers' "poor"-girl-made-good tastes- - high style. The boots she'd worn down to the planet, a Christmas gift to herself, she knew appealed to Jim but she also appreciated how they looked on her; black and laced to her knees, molded to her calves and ankles, the four inch stiletto heels and sharp pointed toes, and her grace in walking in them, were impressive but not quite meant for tundra. The old deck boots weren't insulated enough but practical and may earn her another of his preternatural foot massages.

"There!" she said, raising the antique binoculars to her eyes, her voice intense compared to the lightness of the venture, pointing down the hillock by the winding, steaming hot spring. She handed Jim the glasses. The old macros perplexed her when she'd first opened his gift to her and found them wrapped in tissue; now they were part of one of the adventures he so enjoyed sharing with her.

"I think that's it," he nodded as she drew back the eyepiece and lead him by the hand. "This better be worth it, kiddo," she said with mock sternness.

Carol had woken early despite her lack of sleep, showered, dressed and slipped away with a mug of field insta-coffee without Jim doing more than groan and turn over… like she knew he would. The proprietor of the twenty-one hour saloon gladly gave her a bottle of Glengarry — "Anything for Captain Kirk!" — and, also as she expected, Jim had made little comment about the replaced mystery box that now caused her such conflict. Opening his gift to her though, she never would have expected to find a pair of old binoculars. She couldn't help herself smart him: "Just what a girl wants. How about a TB Seventeen to clean my office for my birthday?"

"Such a diminished sense of exploration from one of Starfleet's best," he chided sweetly, their angry sleep-fuelled tones seemingly never having been sounded. She dug through the box and found, folded in an envelope, a hand drawn map of the landscape surrounding their cabin and a… letter? From Mister Sulu? Sulu's note explained to Doctor Marcus that the Captain had asked his help, and that of Pavel Chekov, to find a hiding spot — accessible but a bit of a climb — and beam his Christmas present for her there. "Happy hunting from your friends in the Command bridge crew." Carol looked at Jim, holding back her grateful smile, thinking, "such wonderful shipmates."

He helped her down an abrupt drop, tough hands gentle around her waist and they jumped the bubbling hot water stream. She climbed another short hillock, going on hands and knees and brushing away the snow from a nook to pull the small silver box she'd caught a glimmer of through the field glasses. She slid back down to his smile.

"You're a regular Edmund Hilary."

"That makes the Captain my Sherpa?" she chirped with a little smirk and a hike of her sharp pointed eyebrows, adding, "Come on, let's go back. I'm looking forward to opening this - - I feel I've earned it."

"You have. Open it now. Here and now."

"Jim, it's cold out."

"Open it."

"Okay," she relented.

She peeled back the clear protective wrap and slipped off her gloves to pop open the silver box itself. Her face fell. "Oh, Jim…" He ran his hands over hers and pulled the simple silver ring from the cushioned holding fold. "My dad gave it to my mom. She gave it to me for you." Carol stared at him, couldn't hold it… looked away. Jim moved to slip the ring on her finger, "Carol Wallace Marcus, how about making an honest dog of a space mongrel?" She slipped her hand away, leaving the ring between his fingers… looked back at him, deeply, wiped away a tear she pretended was pulled from her by the Nefudian wind. "No, Jim." She took deep breath to find the wherewithal… "No."

Jim paced the cabin like the lion he was, his words, his gestures curt. Carol sat on the couch, curling her legs up under her, with another coffee, this one shot with the double liquer that she hoped would relax her from his surprise and the reason for her spoiling his plans that was nestled hidden in her great coat.  
"I thought we'd already talked about this," she said morosely, a little edgy. "It's too early, no matter how else we feel."

"I'm not talking about engagement. I'm certainly not talking about proposal — I know you don't want that and it's not the right time for me"

"Then what are we talking about?" the edge overcoming her better sense.

"It's a… it's old fashioned. My crazy aunt Madrigal called it a promissory ring."

"What? Like high school?" she asked, struggling. "Like you're asking me to go steady? Jim, you're twenty-nine. I'm nearly twenty-six—"

"That's not what this is about, age." He said it with that quiet certainty of discovery that astonished her, all his crew, because he was nearly always right and never remarked on the averages. "This is about that conversation at three in the morning. I'm sorry about what I said… but if this is about your concern about the future—"

"It's only natural, my concern. Don't you think I know that, those kinds of thoughts?" She fought the hostility — it was self-targeted and unhelpful. "But I'm talking about more than just gifted insight and the mistakes we'll make as a matter of course. I'm talking about—"

"Go get it, Carol," he said, knowing what she was running from, in a way that couldn't be argued with. And it was beyond just his Captain's bearing, a commander's attitude. It was why he led a crew fearlessly — as well as fearfully, carefully modulated — into that future. It was who he was. She got up, went to the great coat and returned with the mystery box.

Jim opened it. It wasn't dissimilar from the ring's packaging. He pulled out what looked, for all the world, a bit like a woman's compact — of black, dense plasti-form, a thin ring of blue-silver light glowing within its circumference.

She spoke softly. "You open it with a single touch of the pad on top. Only my print and yours — I don't know how he managed that."

Jim hesitated, pulled his fingers away. "Tell me everything before we…. go any further." He'd known enough to ask in the first place and she'd confirmed his suspicions. Now she, uncharacteristically, hemmed and hawed out as much as she knew.

She told him about the late night she and Uhura got half-drunk on Ensign Ritter's "home-made" wine as the ship waited days for crew replacements from the USS Jed Bartlett heading Earthward. They'd fallen over laughing comparing the attributes of the men in their lives, performing half-accurate impersonations, when Uhura confided a secret about Spock. In one of his infrequent but highly valued private talks with his near-mythic "other" elder self, now a Master of New Vulcan, he'd asked him about his relationship to Nyota both here and "over there." Uhura was surprised but found it telling that, as far as he'd reveal, the elder acknowledged a friendship that had developed during his travels with "his Uhura", a meaningful friendship, but otherwise no other kinship.

Carol would never impose on a friendship, especially when she had so few close genuine friends, and understood if Uhura and particularly Spock would have none of it but — and maybe it was the wine, but not really — she wondered aloud if they could ask the old Master about her future; not in any deeply upsetting galactic sense, what with the research she held dear and was privately aware of its potential… just about her and Jim and what was going to happen in the coming years. Spock, full of surprise when it came to her, Carol thought, discussed it, considered it and returned to her days later with arrangements for Carol to talk to the Master by secure subspace. She would be free to ask whatever she liked, and had to live with the fact the elder may chose not to answer a single question.

She was taken when they finally met over the wavering bands of deep space communication by the old man's most unusual presence — ancient almost in the manner of a wise gnome, carrying himself with the dignity she'd seen in Sarek and far more at ease with himself and the universe than the occasionally troubled young officer she served with, respected, and liked as much he'd allow it, and who held Jim in such high regard.

The elder listened to her with unimposing seriousness, without interrupting her; she'd prepared a presentation of herself she'd normally use to impress colleagues, and came out a babbling school girl. Before she'd begun, the elder Vulcan had told her in deep honesty that he'd known the Doctor Carol Marcus of his time and place not well or deeply but with the collegiality of mutual interests and, eventually, from a friendship she'd had wth his Captain Kirk before he had even come to serve under Kirk, before his Kirk had earned command of a different analagous starship Enterprise; much of what he knew of "Dr. Carol Marcus" was therefore second-hand, his Captain and friend's memories, though she felt the elder was intentionally avoiding…. something, an event, a being he, the elder and her "other" were connected by or to… his avoidance of drawing attention to whatever it was felt like a unusual, alien brokerage of friendship. And after listening to her and her foolishly high-minded words, he surprised her by informing her that he'd present her what he felt would not be intrusive in her daily life. He knew his time left was likely short so he felt that he should record some of his other reality for posterity so had further developed Daystrom's literal impression of his engrams into a form of sophisticated hologram "cascading" system, explaining it to her as best as her reality would, at this point, allow her to understand it. He'd send it to her in time for Christmas as she'd hoped and, as good as his word, that's exactly what he'd done.

Jim sat quietly for a moment, not even looking at her — just staring into space. Finally, he asked in a surprisingly everyday tone, "Have you taken a look at it yet?"

Carol was surprised he'd shown no other reaction, not even during her recitation, and at last said, "Uh no— I mean just a few minutes of it. I was curious to see what it looked like." She paused a moment in a way he recognized, such a slight pause - - more hesitation - - as she struggled how to best present a complex idea that even she couldn't quite get a lock on. "It's breath-taking. But it's meant for us to share." Jim swiped the device off the coffee table and told her, "Put your coat back on."

She stood on the lip of a jutting dry rock overlooking a deep ice canyon called Point Tozeur. He told her not to stand too close to the edge; unexplainable currents and shears, whipped away objects and beings at unstoppable speeds. "Uh, thanks, Captain," she muttered with a sarcastic frown. Kirk slipped his hand in hers.

"Ready?"

"Are you sure you want to do this, Jim?"

"Yes." He said it with steady certainty. "I am."

"What do we tell the Spocks?"

"Not a damn thing. You think either will ask?"

She grabbed the device and threw it out into the canyon. The cold air scooped it up and corkscrewed it and then it was gone. She turned to him and hung up her wrists around his neck. "Why?"

"Because I'm not your dad."

"What?" she was taken aback, started to draw her hands from him but he hugged her close around the waist and lead them down the craggy road back to their waiting air-and-snow mobile. "You're nothing like he was."

Jim shook his head in a small, uncertain way.

"Like he was, I'm natural born Starfleet. Meant to lead, to make the tough decisions and live with those decisions." Jim stopped and turned her to him , assuring her, "But if that's the future you're afraid of, I understand. You loved him, you adored him, and he betrayed your adoration and lost his soul."

"You're much cleverer than—" "Than my reputation suggests," he finished for her, receiving that broad smile of her perfect teeth. She continued thoughtfully, "But the future's not about fear or promise. It's floating on the wind over Tozeur canyon and it'll be buried for a thousand years."

They stopped by the 'mobile and Jim opened the passenger door, helping her in with a steady hand. "The future is best kept in a mystery box."

"Til we decide to open it. Together." She settled into the warm cab. "Then our world changes."

"I'm a fearless man, Carol Marcus," he leaned in close to her, "but I'm scared to death of you."

"No, you're not," she replied, her tone threatening a hint of melancholy. "But you should be." Her smile grew again at some more immediate thought, and she pulled him close to her by the collar of his navy blue heavy coat. She kissed him like she owned him and like he had every bit of her.

Hs right hand slipped from her body and into his coat's pocket and he drew forth the promissory ring. He held it up, fitting in between kisses - - "Almost forgot - - your turn - - " She pulled away a little as he stuck the ring in her hand; looked down at the the thin band of plain silver stark on her palm against the tight black leather of her lined gloves.

Jim glanced up the rocky way they'd come and said with little conviction, "Now we could climb back up Mount Tozeur there before the Howlers come in for the rest of the day and they seal the place off or we can - - Oh! I know!"

Carol looked back up at him, taken by his abrupt shift of tone, but her eyes had narrowed and her brow had lightly creased and she closed her fingers around the ring that had been his gift to her, what it stood for.

"Have you heard of the Tinja?"

"I think I saw something about it up at the Chalet," she replied, distracted. "It's some sort of touristy thing?"

"No, no! Well, yes. But I've heard its fantastic. It's a massive waterfall off the big river near the equator, the Tinja Kava. Most of the day, the falls are frozen solid, then 'round mid day - - sure as Yosemite - - when the temperature's as hot as it gets there and if the sun's clear, water breaks through the ice and its a waterfall again - -"

"And, let me guess - - about…," she bobbed her head as she made a complex calculation seem like a shopping list for groceries. "About forty-seven minutes later, you get to watch as the water slowly freezes over and the ice spreads and retakes the falls?"

"Fantastic, huh? Perfect place for you to pitch that thing."

She looked at him askance but he continued certainly…. "It's a good four hours in that ski-jet thingamajig that came with the cabin and not much to see en route but I think I can get the saloon-keeper's son to lend us that areochop I saw on the roof. It'll be a round trip in half the time - -"

'Jim," she said and he stopped immediately, his attention arrested. With inarguable certitude, she grabbed his right wrist and pulled his hand to hers. She turned his hand over, opened her palm and sealed it over his then wrapped his fingers around the ring. Her fingers around his wrist again, she guided his hand back into his heavy coat's deep pocket. She kept her hand in there with his, moving it 'round to grab his backside through the thick lining, and jerked him up close so he pressed his body to hers and smiled…. understanding.

"How about I give it to you again your next birthday. Gives me a little less than eight months not to foul up too badly."

She shrugged and faked a cool, controlling look. "Take your best shot."

As she pulled away, she said surely, "Let's go watch the rest of 'The Philadelphia Story' then turn the day sideways."

"All right." He closed her door with a little slam. "I wanted to see how it turned out."

 **\- - _STAR TREK "a Christmas trifle"_ I**

As mentioned in part I's introduction, "a Christas trifle" is an "unintentional prequel" (written shortly after the release of "INTO DARKNESS" ) to my novel being written serialized and posted here, STAR TREK BEYOND FOREVER, set in J.J. Abrams' alternate reality and centering even more deeply than this short on the complex relationship between officers and lovers, Jim Kirk and Carol Marcus. If you haven't already, give it a look. And, as always post reviews, thoughts, theories etc. and get the conversation going as word of mouth is the best way to advertise (also feel free to privaely message me and you will receive a most prompt reply.

Thanks.


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